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By the time I was on chapter three, I had a mug in my hands. The blood was hot and rich, and when I was finished, I licked down into the mug as far as I could.

Grandmother looked tired, but she smiled at me. “We’ll find a way,” she said. “We’ll find something.”

I nodded and kissed her cheek. (She smelled like salt and lotion and talc.)

After she had gone, Jake stepped out from behind my curtains.

“Thanks,” I said. “For before.”

He shrugged. No problem, he said, not quite looking at me. I’ll let you get some sleep. He started to fizzle around the edges, like film burning out.

“Don’t go,” I said.

He stopped. Now I could see him when he held his breath; I could see him nodding, his dark hair falling into his face.

Even if he’d never told me, I could tell he had died unhappy. His eye sockets were two black pits, as if sadness had swallowed him up while he was still alive. I wondered if he would ever have real eyes, or if this was how his sorrow had marked him.

(I wondered if he was sorry for anyone else; if he had seen anyone else’s last moments, when he happened to be looking. Madison and the rest of them were worthless, but it hurt, it hurt, to think of them all being gone, and just me left behind. There were kinds of loneliness that I still couldn’t name.)

He spent all night beside me. I could feel him breathing, and if I reached out my hand, there was a chill when my fingers passed through his fingers.

One morning as I was walking to school, the sun came out. It was the summer sun, hot and bright.

My blood started to boil.

I screamed, pulled my hoodie up over my head, and ran. The sun was beating down, I was aching and trembling, I didn’t know where I could go that would be safe. Finally I ran past the wooded acre—FOR SALE for the last five years. It was studded with trees and brambles; it was dark and wild.

It was a beacon.

I ran until I couldn’t see the street, and then I fell to my knees and pressed my face to the ground. It had rained overnight, and the smell of the damp earth was as comforting as an embrace.

I dug. My arms were like marble, like iron; mud and roots flew up under my hands.

I slid into the shallow trench, pulling mud over me until the last of the knife-sharp pain was gone; still my body trembled, and I gasped into the sopping mud, openmouthed, until I choked.

The grave got mercifully cool, as if snow had suddenly fallen on it. Jake whispered, Suyin?

I cried.

When it was dark, I clawed my way out and walked home, sluicing mud off my clothes with my hands. Jake was quiet, but I could feel him to my right, a patch of blessed cold in a world that was getting warmer.

(My body was room temperature these days.)

I got home just in time to catch Mom, Dad, and Grand-mother cooking dinner. They stopped and stared.

“I slipped,” I said into the silence.

My mom sighed. “Suyin, what’s wrong with you?”

“I’ll wash them,” I said. “I need to shower. Sorry.”

I dropped the boots in the hall and squelched up the stairs as carefully as I could.

If I turned on just cold water, it was almost nice.

When I came down, Grandmother was making tea.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Better. You?”

She was looking a little drawn, a little pale, but she waved one hand and said, “Better,” and we smiled.

She was wearing a yellow shirt.

My stomach dropped.

“Grandmother, are you scared of me?”

She looked up and blinked. “Oh, no. You always wear yellow when you’re near jiang-shi. The priests used to ring bells to let us know they were carrying souls with them.” She smiled. “You remind me of home, now. Of those days.”

I thought about her home in some little town in Anhui province I had never seen; how Dad had brought her here. And her dead granddaughter was the best thing that had happened to her, somehow.

“Tell me,” I said.

She beamed. Then she told me about going to the opera there; she told me how to steam stone frog.

Then she kicked my ass at rummy. Twice.

After she had gone to bed, I went upstairs, worrying with every step.

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